saturday in the park, overlooking hollyhock

growing up, my dad was a general contractor. every saturday and during summers, he was notorious for making my brother and i tag along to his construction sites, where he'd give us odd jobs like pushing the wheel barrel to collect all the trash his workers had left laying around. that, or he'd make us load his trailer full of whatever large piles of crap, (tiles, shingles, smashed up concrete, etc.), were piled in the yard. 

when i was seventeen, my dad introduced me to paul simon, and simon has a song called 'so long, frank lloyd wright'. so, on a whim, for one of my dads birthdays, i bought him the biography of frank lloyd wright. it had a cool cover and i had the faintest recollection that wright was an architect, so i connected the dots, and wha-lah! 

but i started to feel guilty about gifting a book i hadn't read, plus my dad is rather conservative, so i was petrified that the book would contain some expletive, or even worse some kind of sexual reference. so the day before his birthday, i read the book - cover to cover. it was the first time i'd ever considered construction - architecture - and the like from a creative perspective. before, it was only piles of broken concrete and empty arizona iced tea cans. 

today my brother is setting off on his own road in design and construction, and he builds some impressive shit. he's always sending me photos of the things he's working on, and it makes me smile to know that even if he calls by a different name, kaiser construction inc. lives on. 

i don't design or build things for a living, but at some point growing up - nature versus nurture sparked a fire big enough to call it all fascinating; and on a cloudy day in northeast los angeles, that's excuse enough to spend all saturday in the park, overlooking hollyhock.

through skid row on a bicycle

i've always thought to myself - poverty smells much worse than it looks. were it the other way around, i imagine we'd be much more compelled to find a resolution to it all. 

we are often content to live with problems we can see, but seldom will we live with a problem we can smell, (at least not quietly anyway). 

everyone has seen poverty on some level or another, and yet there is very little urgency to do something about it. but find someone who can tell you what it really smells like, and i imagine they have a few things to to say on the matter...

loved.

i once said 

that love was never fifty fifty, 

but i was wrong 

to say it so absolutely.

half of love  

is arriving at the places 

where we grasp fully

(after all these years)

that i am not deserving.

the other half of love  

is the entire lifetime 

in proving

to another that they are.  

she draws flowers 

and i write about them 

we are seeds and earth

we are deep beneath the surface

we are gathering our strengths 

and arriving at the places 
where we are grasping fully
that the fracturing of our walls 
permits the roots within ourselves
to spring forth
we are springing forth
like slow motion underground explosions
we are resurrecting
we are taking it all in 
we are not there yet 
but we are the entire lifetime 
in proving 
to each other that we are, 
loved. 

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in 

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere 

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done 

by only me is your doing,my darling) 

                                                      i fear 

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want 

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) 

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant 

and whatever a sun will always sing is you 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows 

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud 

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows 

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) 

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

E.E. Cummings

kathy's song (a cover)